Who was the Darkness of the Sand
by Jux
Summary: All gods have stories, all gods have ends. The story of an old god's death, and life.


And he screamed.   
It was the yelp of a jackal, trod upon by an Asp. It was serpentine, it was absurd.   
It was Set.   
Old dust peddler, snake-friend and sun hater, brother killing son of dogs. It was Set, and he was losing ground.   
  
Listen:   
"This is CNN, and we are happy to report that Rashid Al'Berhed has been recently acquitted of his 3 murders, as the courts have found that he was the product of a broken home, and cannot be held responsible for the actions which society forced him to commit..."   
  
The scent of disappointment, is not unlike that of Despair - but it's easier, and perhaps, less meaningful. At the moment, Set does not think so.   
  
Look: The old god of Egypt's hate stands at the back of the judge presiding over Rashid's case. Is he scheming? Is he whispering, in his ash-rot voice?  
  
"He is mine.. Mine! What of his home? There is poison in his heart, and it is a black organ that pumps it - Mine! My Heart! Give him back, to me!"   
  
Is he pleading?   
  
"...mine..."  
  
The world is veritable cache, of gods. You know that. You might not Know it, but in a sense you do. In a sense, you cannot avoid knowing it. Let us know, for a moment, of Set.  
Do you know what happens, when gods die? I'm sorry, I've misworded my question.   
Do you Understand, what happens, when gods die?   
The roads to Death are many and varied, of course, but all gods walk their way along the Family's Road, in order.   
To Begin, Destiny. Because everything begins with Destiny. And nothing.   
(Destruction rests in the between time on the road, all white space is his claim - time passes, things Change. The journey itself, is he)   
Next, to Dream. Where else can something borne of man take form?   
On, to Desire. Zealotry, passion, faith... she/he has so Many names...  
Falling, to Despair. Foresight is a terrible gift. As is rationality. Gods have an overabundance of both.   
And of course, Delirium. A brief, whirlwind dance with denial and desperate rage.  
As a matter of course, to Death. What more is there to be said?   
Oh yes, it ends, this road, with Destiny. After all, nothing ever does.   
  
It is neither pleasant nor morbid, to know this. And it is so. The Scorpion of Sun's Demise is currently flirting with the youngest of the Siblings, but let us turn a few pages back. It isn't fair to tell of current things without a little backdrop. And contrary to popular sentiment, life is atrociously fair...   
  
[The Dreaming: A Long Time Ago]  
  
The egg is as black as an absence of stars. And it Knows it. It has a smug, cultured villainy; its cracks are many, fine, and growing. Morpheus is to a great degree, unimpressed.   
Resting near the fidgeting egg is a mortal's heart, bound by ebon wire to an unidentifiable mass of dreamstuff.   
The degree of Malice needed to kill a nightmare is really remarkable. It had never happened before, though, as with most things, it was just a matter of time. It had happened at midnight, in a lunatic fit of poetics - the battle had not lasted long. The mortal's name was unimportant. The nightmare's life likewise, it was the Concept that was monumental. It was an awakening. It was, fratricide, as well. Oh yes, that was the way of it. 'Slay all the monsters in the world, look back behind you and see the blood, then remind me: Who was the monster again?' - the killing of a Nightmare was for lack of a less obvious term, a Nightmarish act. It had bound the two swiftly and with no room for argument, and just as quickly done as the dream perished in a fountain of needy gore - and the egg, was lain.   
It was not, a new idea. It was, however, a new god. The universe adores youth.   
  
Years pass, as they are prone to do. And the god grows. And men change.  
  
"Morpheusss..." Sibilant. It isn't just, an adjective. "...Morpheuss.."   
An ass's head, speaks with the tongue of a snake. Disconcerting, perhaps, but not to Dream. Finally, he turns to the young god standing behind him. Turns and speaks.   
"Set?" Imagine for a moment that you were forced to give yourself writer's block, and wrap that all round in ancient responsibility, just to keep yourself from pouring your soul away into a stream that wouldn't care. Done? Now, don't critique monosyllabic speech.  
"Morpheuss, it is Time, it is time for me to go.." The dusky skinned boy-thing points a delicate finger to a pool of the Nile's Water, showing the dream of a man who would be Pharaoh. He would have glory, and he would have his eldest brother's heart on a plate. Set licked horse's lips.   
"Yes, perhaps it is at that.." Dream follows his finger, his gaze, and his ambition. He follows it and whispers a word, opening the way between worlds, the second step on the god's long trail. It looks suspiciously like a vein.   
"I will not, forget You.. Dream Shaper.." Morpheus has only one child, but, all gods are his, in some way. Set has tried to kill him three times daily since his inception. Sentiment.   
  
  
[Earth: Egypt: Some time later]  
  
  
Travel long enough to the west, and you die. So goes the tale in Egypt. But before you reach the end of the world, just before you fade from mortality, you may also seek Him in the West. This is the tale that the thief clutches to his chest tighter even than his skin of water. He is a figure in black, in an ocean of silver. He is alone, and he is filled with Hate. When he has gone further than he knew he was able, the thief whispers a name, and pours something from a second skin - something sanguine. He sits then, and prays, as only one without faith or love is able to. He prays to Set. The words are a cant of dark deeds and darker motivation, the blood is from a goat which gored its family to death. The god, is right behind him.   
"Who stands in the hallss of dust and tastes of malice?" The forked tongue darts out, feeling air and soul, deliciously pleased.   
"L..Lord-- My Lord! Set!" The youth's stammering is pardonable, he speaks to a stain on shadows. "I have come to seek audience, to seek a boon of you, my lord."   
This is met with a darksome smile. Really it's the only one these lips -ever- give. Slow, cruel, seductive. It suggests many things, and all of them fanged. Set speaks.   
"Yess..? And what do you wish, of the night?" (In the shadows of a bedroom hung with silk, a man speaks to our thief, he speaks words of regret: "I'm..sorry..")   
"I wish revenge." ("I just cant do this anymore, I just don't..")   
"Oh?" (Weeks past flash by, heavy with passion and lust, ringing with cries rich and varied)  
"I want him to Suffer." ("..don't.. love you")   
  
The massive, sculptured form of Set towers above the black-clad thief, and the night is pungent with a serpent's grave-must odor. An ass's lips touch those of the boy in a loathsome kiss, sealing the deal with a chuckle low and base - leaving the youth alone, to walk back into the land of the living. Two weeks later a shopkeeper's son lies in bed, dead after a week's worth of dementia and fiery pain, the leavings of a tiny arachnid. The thief's sister shared the man's fate. When he heard the news, both at once, for just an instant he tasted Horse and Hate. And it was worth it.   
  
  
[Earth: Egypt: The Age of Looting]  
  
  
A sneer, is the only thing appropriate. Set lurks, half starved and reed-thin in the corners of a tomb, awaiting the men he knows will come. These are not his thieves. These are not those whose greed is rivaled only by their faith, and their terrible nature. These are scientists, historians, a thousand names for Rapist. And over them Set has no hold. They are foreign to this place of sand, sun and shade, and they bring with them the terror of morality, of observation, of cold, high handed butchery. Set lurks, and mouths the curses his people had for him, a century ago.   
  
Around the dead king are packed plates of gold, burnished to a high gloss, gleaming in the starlight that lances down from above. They reflect the world caught in dying amber. Set laughs, grotesque features caught and held in the treasures of his fallen people. The walls tremble with the digger's dynamite. They are coming down. They have brought native workers with them, these explorers, and at the sight of his own, honestly greedy people Set takes heart, and reaches down deep within in them, dragging from their feeble avarice the power he needs, hurling ghost-asps of discord and anger into the men as they flood the temple-crypt. Workers begin to bicker, fights erupt amongst chroniclers, historians throw fists. Set has just begun to laugh, when more men enter, and more, and more - diggers, archeologists, writers, camera crews... the snake's fangs are tiny hooks of golden glass. At the foot of a king's coffin, Set weeps.   
  
  
[Egypt: Cairo: The Present]   
  
The refuse-strewn alley was not built to hold so many. They are clustered close, beggars, homeless idiots, crack-head hookers and derelicts of all description. Some fifty wretched souls, standing at the foot of a makeshift, rotting podium, listening to a man in black silk.   
"..and on our heels shall be the hounds of Death and Madness! We are the new order, we are the army of toxic change! We are legion, and let our might be a blaze upon the land! We will take back our home, our streets, we will Triumph!" He rants, and raves, waving a knife of glass. His audience is not unmoved, they begin to boil, they begin to shout with him, they begin to Riot. Spurred by an almost mystical rage, they move as one. Spilling outwards from the stinking alley in a tidal wave of fury and filth, they run amok across the city. Well, across the street, at least. Officers had been alerted by the noise and now opened fire after perfunctory warnings. Eighteen were slain. Nothing else arose of it, the homeless remained so, though they were perhaps a bit less excitable. Things in this day and age, are fairly stable... mores the pity.  
  
A white hand closes upon the shoulder of the now shaking speaker, it feels him tremble.   
  
"I..I..did not, forget..Dream" The voice might well be that of a villain. But it is perhaps closer to a child. One whose tongue is long, and crooked, and whose bones are filled with dust.   
"No, you did not. But no one remembers. Not until the end." Dream's words are as flat as his features, and his hand has not moved from the rounded shoulder before him.   
"Did I do well..? Do you think?" Uncertainty breeds between the words, the face is tremulous that speaks them. Dream pauses.   
"How could I -possibly- know that?"  
The old god smiles a newborn grin, broad and earnestly equine. Dream catches the knife before it strikes his chest. When he looks up, the sound of wings is all that greets him, and the scent of a serpent whose duty is done. Dream does not smile, not even a little, tiny bit. 


End file.
